vate education of the Tokugawa period, a considerable proportion of teachers
in the lower schools were Buddhist priests. Anti-clericalism soon passed as the
modernizing regime made de facto accommodation with Buddhist education.
The Shinto cult promoted at the national level was too particularistic and
too artificial a construction to serve as a rationalized philosophy; on the other
side, Neo-Confucianism, dominant in the elite schools during the Tokugawa,
was already substantially secularized. Buddhist philosophy made an unex-
pected comeback because it could most easily take the form of a religion of
reason. Nishida and the Kyoto school paid respect to tradition but relied not
on dogma and faith but on articulate argument. Precisely because the institu-
tional reformers had tested the imports available from world philosophy, the
network of leading Japanese intellectuals soon recognized that in Buddhist
materials they had available a rationalized religious philosophy that could hold
its own with any in the cosmopolitan world. Even this pattern is not so
distinctive to Japan; for each of the reforming educational systems—in Amer-
ica, Italy, and England—was also an international import. The intellectuals in
each of these networks too were cosmopolitans reaching out from within their
own school system in an attempt to loosen the hold of particularistic religious
doctrine. Idealism is cosmopolitanism in religion; it is religious thought argued
out independently of dogma and tradition, yet keeping a place in its system
for a reasoned loyalty to transcendence and tradition. That is why Idealism
everywhere is the favored philosophy in the transitional generation of secular-
izing reformers.The Secularist Repudiation of Idealism
There was a revolt against Idealism in virtually every national academic system
in the generation after university reform was complete. Secularization almost
everywhere eventually won a complete victory within the academic world.
Where this happened, the claims of religious specialists were reduced to those
of one specialty on a par with any other. After the older generation died out,
even a sentimental respect for religious tradition no longer had much influence.
The younger generation of intellectuals, unconcerned about the sensibilities of
their academic grandparents, took as their topic the weaknesses presented by
the Idealist halfway house. The Germans, who first underwent the Idealist
revolution, were the first to repudiate it. After Hegel’s death came Feuerbach
and Marx, Helmholtz and Büchner. In England, Bradley and Bosanquet became
targets for Moore and Russell. In America, Royce and the religious-pragmatist
James were superseded by C. I. Lewis, Stevenson, and Quine.
Nevertheless, philosophy everywhere flows in channels initially cut by the
Idealist revolution. Although flamboyant Idealism has been repudiated, phi-
686 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths